When designing a communications system, it is often desired to cover an area larger than can be economically covered by a single transmitter site. In such cases, multiple transmitter sites are employed, each transmitting substantially the same data on substantially the same channel, in a process known as simulcasting. Due to differences in propagation delays and other factors, a receiver in the coverage area may receive signals from two or more transmitters at slightly different times, leading to a form of distortion known as Simulcast Delay Spread (SDS) distortion. Under certain conditions this distortion may become severe and corrupt the received data to an unacceptable degree.
Receiver modifications to reduce the effects of SDS distortion are known in the art; however, these modifications tend to degrade static (i.e., non-simulcast) sensitivity, adjacent channel selectivity, or other desirable receiver performance parameters. Conversely, methods of optimizing the receiver to achieve maximum static sensitivity tend to degrade the receiver's performance in the presence of SDS distortion.
Since it is difficult to simultaneously optimize a receiver for best SDS distortion and static sensitivity performance, a need exists for a method which can reliably discern between a simulcast and static channel at a receiver. If this were available, an adaptable receiver optimized for static sensitivity could be used that employed SDS distortion mitigation methods only when in a simulcast environment, and therefore achieve optimum performance in both static and simulcast environments.